


Allergies (are excuses)

by utanda09



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Felix is tired and sad, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, as u can see i still don't know how to tag, but i love spring, chan is me with my ex before we dated, hyunjin's name appears exactly two times, i hate allergies, it's kind of stupid, they're both stupid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:21:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23278534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/utanda09/pseuds/utanda09
Summary: felix feels like crying and it’s because of allergies.not because chan's gone. definitely not.
Relationships: Bang Chan/Lee Felix
Comments: 1
Kudos: 89





	Allergies (are excuses)

**Author's Note:**

> i don't really know what this is but i had fun writing it..??
> 
> also just in case some people take it the wrong way - i don't mean allergies are excuses in like "saying you have food allergies is a way of getting out of eating something you don't like" because it ISN'T (and trust me i've had SO MANY people say that to me when i said i can't eat raw foods - it's not an allergy but i react really badly to it but people don't believe me because i'm japanese and you know, "eat the sashimi it's good come on you're overthinking we're japanese you can keep it down" and i - anyways)
> 
> i'm talking about spring pollen allergies (hay fever) being good excuses for when you're crying  
> because i use that excuse a lot ha ha
> 
> don't take food allergies lightly people.

Lee Felix is tired. It’s been a long day – starting with the eight o’clock he’d been stupid enough to take, followed by the university dance team practice, and then succeeded by his shift at the language school, trying not to cry while speaking his mother tongue over yelling five-year-olds. To top it all off, spring was approaching, pollen was traveling, and forgetting to take medication meant sneezing until his sides were sore. It also meant lots of water in his eyes, both produced by him in the form of tears or added by him in the form of eyedrops Hyunjin had kindly bought for him after practice.

Felix is so incredibly tired, it takes three tries and a frustrated stomp of his right foot for him to realize he had been twisting his key in the wrong direction. He pushes his apartment door open with a groan, his heart sinking when he sees that the entryway is dark, that only his other pair of sneakers is placed neatly along the wall, that there’s nobody at home to greet him with a warm smile and hug or shoving him inside good-naturedly as they came back from work together. There had been someone, one month ago.

Already a month, yet only a month. Felix sighs and toes off his shoes, not bothering to set them to the side like his other pair. He does have half a mind to lock the door behind him, though. He pretends that he’s keeping the door chain open for later convenience, just in case he sleeps in tomorrow and can’t be bothered to fumble with the cursed thing. Not because he’s still hoping that someone would show up, using the spare key they’d forgotten to return, and barge in with a proposal of _let’s talk, we need to talk_.

When Felix flips the light switch on, he turns it back off the next second because the sight was a little too overwhelming for his worn out mind. He waits ten seconds, actually _counts_ , before flipping the switch again. Let’s out a distressed “no,” when he sees that the month’s worth pile of clean laundry is still there, like a mountain, right in front of the window. The clothes he’d had enough sense to wash and dry, but not enough sense to put back into his closet, thrown haphazardly on his (relatively) clean floor.

He stares for another ten seconds, sneezes because he’d been holding it for the last ten minutes, and decides to fold the laundry.

“I am capable,” he mumbles to himself. He sets his bag down, shrugs his jacket off, and takes a seat next to the mound of clothes.

And he truly is fine and capable, for a few minutes. The sneezes die down, reduced to annoyed and dejected sniffles, as he starts spreading the laundry out, separating different articles of clothing. He’s already done with t-shirts and pants – it wasn’t like he had a lot of clothes anyway; he only had three pairs of bottoms to begin with.

It’s when he starts pulling out the hoodies that Felix stutters to a stop, his fingers clutching one that looks all too familiar, but isn’t necessarily his.

It’s Chan’s, too big to fit Felix properly, the neckline hanging a little too low, the arms too long, the hem being long enough to cover his bottom. Chan hadn’t been much taller than him – in fact, Felix is sure he’d been the taller of the two, even if by a mere centimeter – but the elder did have broader shoulders, longer arms. Bigger hoodies that the younger loved to steal every time Chan came over to stay, drowning himself in the material as well as the scent.

“I,” Felix murmurs to himself while bringing the piece of clothing to his nose. “I am probably weird. But I’m going to do this.”

He takes a whiff at it, only expecting the smell of his own detergent and not any of Chan’s cologne. But it’s there, somehow not lost after being piled underneath all that laundry, or maybe Felix is imagining it because his nose is probably too stuffy to smell anything, but it at least feels like the scent is there, and that’s the last straw.

Felix inhales sharply through his mouth, rubbing furiously at his nose with the sleeve of his own hoodie. He throws Chan’s back on top of the pile, stands up, takes exactly one step backward before falling on his bed.

He wriggles his way up the mattress until his head his flush against the pillow, eyes staring up at his ceiling. The sight of the hoodie, combined with the scent of Chan’s cologne, had suddenly brought back the fact that he still _misses_ the older boy so, so much. Already a month, yet only one month since Chan had left him, all alone in his apartment, a sad, apologetic smile barely hanging on his lips as he said,

 _“I’m sorry, I don’t think that we’re–,”_ Chan had cut himself off then, looking a bit distressed, before continuing, _“–that_ I’m _ready for this.”_

And that had been that – the texts and calls had stopped abruptly then, partly because Chan had stopped taking the initiative, and partly because Felix was now afraid. Then, within that short time span, Chan had quit the language school, graduated university, and Felix had no means of seeing the elder in person again.

They weren’t together, then. They had never been together. It was when Felix had somehow mustered up enough courage to ask to be together that everything crumbled. He had probably been stupid to think that Chan would think of him as more than a little brother. But then again, the older Australian probably had some serious issues if he was cuddling all his friends to sleep, pressing kisses on their nose and calling them _beautiful, my beautiful little sunflower._

“No,” Felix grumbles for no reason in particular. His nose and eyes feel hot and watery, and he knows it’s not because of the allergies. All his doors and windows are closed, and while going to bed in clothes he’d worn outside isn’t the best idea, it’s not enough to make him start crying again.

But he pretends that it is because of the damned pollen because he needs to pretend that he’s strong enough to not miss Chan. He needs to pretend, so he can actually be strong enough to take the initiative, to text Chan, _we need to talk_ , because before he was a crush, he was a best friend, and Felix couldn’t let that go.

Felix supposes he’s a bit too focused on trying to keep the tears at bay because he only registers that his apartment door had been opened when he hears the distinct sound of it closing. He sits up, eyes wide and heart suddenly racing a mile a minute. He grabs his pillow just in case it’s an intruder and not the person he’s hoping to see, gets up from his bed, and walks over to the hallway.

He isn’t sure how he had meant to react when he sees Chan’s back, clad in a black jacket as always, hunched over to probably fix Felix’s shoes so they’re lined up neatly against the wall. Felix isn’t totally sure, but whatever he’d had in mind is all out the window because all he does is let out a shriek, hands raising the pillow above his head before slamming it down to the ground.

“What–,” Chan cries, just as loud, and when he whips his head around he’s just as beautiful as Felix remembers, looking tired as always, nose and eyes a perfect pale shade because the jerk doesn’t have spring allergies, and therefore hasn’t been the victim of sneezing or crying.

Felix’s stomach lurches when their eyes meet. Then it knocks into his lungs and shoves all the air out when Chan smiles, a genuine, gorgeous smile that probably rivals all the lights of Seoul and the sun. Then, it wraps itself around his heart and twists when the elder starts walking towards him; unwinds itself and sinks slowly under when the smile slowly fades, replaced by an expression of worry, large hands stretching towards the younger.

“Are you – are you crying?” Chan stammers out, cupping the younger’s face.

Felix sniffles dramatically, scrunching his nose, blinking rapidly to get the water out of his eyes. A few drops cling to his eyelashes before finding their way down his cheeks, though they disappear quickly enough under the pad of Chan’s thumbs, swiping away deftly.

“I wouldn’t say _crying_ ,” he mumbles. He pulls his chin back, looking down, peering up at the elder through his lashes before quickly looking away again. “It’s just...allergies. You know, spring season, pollen, allergies, all that. Not because you left – or I kind of made you leave – for a month, walking out that same door you just slipped right in through. Nope, not at all.” Felix isn’t sure if what he’s saying is making sense. He simply feels like he needs to keep talking in order to keep himself from bursting into tears again.

He’s silenced soon enough when one of Chan’s hands moves to push his bangs away, probably revealing the fact that Felix has his eyebrows scrunched together, eyes still shiny with unshed tears. Felix allows himself to get lost in the comfort of the older male’s hand carding through his hair, gentle and warm. He keeps his gaze lowered, now keeping his lips pressed together to keep them from quivering.

“Hey Lix,” Chan says. His voice is soft, and so are his movements when he pulls his hands away from Felix, the action slow and deliberate as if he didn’t want to. “Can I, uh, start over?”

Felix looks up at this, tilting his head in confusion. “Start over what?” His voice doesn’t waver as he speaks, and he mentally pats himself on the back for it.

Chan cracks a small smile. “I came here to talk to you, but this wasn’t the kind of reunion I’d imagined.”

The younger sniffles again, wiping at his nose, yet again. “Oh,” is all he manages, before he adds, “what kind of reunion were you expecting? I mean, considering that you basically broke in without texting me first and all.”

At this, Chan laughs. “That’s a good point, but I wouldn’t call it breaking in, since I do have your spare key.”

He moves to pull said key out of his pocket, dangling it in front of the younger’s face. Felix allows himself to smile when he sees it’s still connected to the keychain he’d gifted a while back.

“I don’t know what I’d expected, but it went something along the lines of me grabbing some of my stuff I’d left, and then asking you if you wanted to grab some food tomorrow or whenever, and then potentially asking you out?” Chan finishes quietly, his voice having gone from somewhat confident to uncertain with each word.

Felix finds that a nervous Chan is a very endearing Chan. Then his heart flutters almost painfully as the elder’s words sink in.

“You...wanted to ask me out?”

Chan looks almost terrified, even on the verge of tears himself, but he holds steady when their gazes meet once more. Every single one of Chan’s features screams _yes_ , and maybe he had even said it out loud, but Felix doesn’t trust his hearing over the blood rushing in his ears.

“You want me to – you want to me – you want to–.” Felix is fumbling over the words, nearly giggling as he does, reaching out to curl his fingers into Chan’s shirt. “You want to ask me out,” he breathes once more. He steps forward, feeling the softness of his pillow underneath his sock-clad feet. _Gross_ , he thinks in the corner of his mind.

But now that the small distance between them has been reduced to practically nothing, Chan is blushing, the shade of his cheeks and nose probably matching that of Felix’s.

“I want to hug you,” the pink haired boy says, but his arms are already wrapping themselves around the elder’s broad shoulders, bringing them even closer still. Chan’s arms are wrapping around his middle before his words are finished, too, and Felix breathes in the familiar scent of cologne, letting the warmth seep through him. “I missed you.”

“Me too,” Chan replies. “And that starting over thing didn’t go the way I thought it would, either, but, you know, I popped the question.”

Felix giggles, shaking his head against the broad shoulder. “No, you just said you were thinking about asking me out.”

The elder huffs, pulling back. “And I’m having second thoughts about it,” he grumbles, but he gives in anyway, now placing his hands on Felix’s shoulders.

With a gentle push, the two start moving through the younger’s room until they’re both planted on the bed, Felix pulling his legs up and Chan moving to take his hands.

“I had some thought about this, Lix,” Chan starts. “When I left, I said I wasn’t ready because I really wasn’t ready. I was scared, I guess, because I liked you in the same way you told me that day, too, but I was afraid that if we got together and then fell out – that would mean I would actually lose you. And I didn’t think I was ready for that.”

He pauses as if to think, but Felix thinks it’s just for effect.

“But I guess my feelings won over,” the blond finally laughs, tilting his head and peering at the younger. “And I just have to make you love me enough so you don’t leave. _And_ I’ll just make a list of things that I love about you every day, so I don’t fall out of love with you!”

Felix furrows his brows, purses his lips. “That was heartfelt and cute, and then you have to go creepy,” he comments.

Chan shrugs. “Anything to make it last,” he replies. “So?”

“So?”

An exasperated sigh, followed by, “Will you go out with me, Lee Yongbok?”

The said boy parts his lips, trying to keep a straight face. In the end, he fails, breaking out into a large smile as he nods fervently, saying, “Yes, Christopher Bang. I’d be overjoyed.”

\--

(“Did I ever mention that I started to like the name Yongbok, just because you and Hyunjin use it all the time, saying how it sounds cute?”

“No, but I’m glad we’ve helped you on the journey, Yongbokie.”)

**Author's Note:**

> if you can figure out what song i was inspired by in the first bit, you are day6 trash and i want to be your friend
> 
> i also tend to write my characters based on my own experiences, but i have come to the realization that i have become a giant crybaby since entering university so if you think that the characters in my fics cry too much – take it with a grain of salt i guess?? idk
> 
> hope you guys enjoyed this! stay healthy & safe, wash your hands, don’t panic and buy all the groceries because that’s not you thinking ahead and being safe, that’s just you being a butt and not being considerate about other people’s well being, and stay hydrated!


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